`Museum Of Gold` Exhibit To Include Peruvian Mummy

WEST PALM BEACH — As if the recent visit of Prince Charles and Princess Diana was not exciting enough for Palm Beach County, next month a South American king is coming to town.

The king won`t play polo, not at his advanced age of more than 1,000 years.

The mummified king is one of about 255 pieces selected for the Peruvian Museum of Gold exhibit scheduled for the South Florida Science Museum Jan. 17 through Feb. 16.

He was selected by museum officials who returned from Peru last week after a six-day trip to select the exhibit pieces and visit some of the archaeological sites at which the Incan artifacts and treasures were discovered.

Joining the king will be a reconstructed litter used to transport upper-class members of Incan society. It includes actual pieces from a pre-Columbian litter as well as an authentic back plate from the litter. They have been displayed outside of Peru only once, Science Museum Director Ed Sobey said. That exhibit was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The back plate is about six square feet and has a lot of ornamental detail, Sobey said.

It is typical of the quality of the exhibits that will be displayed here, Science Museum Director of Development Mary O`Connor said.

``We`re getting the cream of the crop,`` from the Museum of Gold in Lima, O`Connor said.

O`Connor and Sobey were two of the five people who visited Peru last week to select the pieces. The others were Museum Administrator Walter Blethen and Lupe Alex, a Peruvian native, and her husband, Steve.

The Science Museum is getting one of three mummies in the Peruvian collection, the only litter back rest and one of two museum funerary bundles in the collection.

The bundles were used to encase mummies and false heads. Gold funerary -- or burial -- masks were then placed on top of the bundles before burial, Sobey said.

Sobey said the museum here will have for exhibit one of the largest funerary masks ever found.

The exhibit here, the only U.S. display of the material next year, includes other artifacts, such as gold jewelry, breastplates, ceremonial knives and implements, that are more typical of the Peruvian collection, Sobey said.

Museum officials had to get permission of the Peruvian government to bring the exhibit out of the country. The government is concerned about the pieces because much of the pre-Columbian gold in the country was taken by Spanish expeditions when they were colonizing the continent, Sobey said.

Additionally, the U.S. government had to promise the Peruvian government that the exhibit would be returned, Sobey said.

That may explain the reception Sobey and O`Connor got from Peruvian customs officers who saw the boxes of ceremonial knives they were bringing back as souvenirs.

The knives were replicas brought from the museum gift shop, O`Connor said. The machine guns the customs officers held on them while they inspected the knives were real.